Sam Pink

1.

     A woman wearing a backpack stood in front of me at the currency exchange, and she was at the window with an employee.
     The employee said something about a form and the woman wearing the backpack responded with one or two short shrieks. Like, the sounds she made, they weren’t moans. They were more like a shriek that isn’t too high-pitched. Like ghost shrieking, I guess. You might say it was like ghost shrieking.
     She kept talking that way to the employee and everyone in the currency exchange looked at her and then looked away.
     When she left, it was my turn in line.
     It seemed possible that while I was talking to the employee I was making the same kind of shrieking sound.
     Seriously I don’t know, it could be.
     Something else I just realized is that wherever I am, I always seem to be figuring out ways to defend myself if something happens, no matter what happens. (But then I can’t think of what I’d want to be defending.)
     Outside the currency exchange on the corner, the weather was cooler and a lot of people were out walking and doing whatever.
     I felt freedom.


2.

     I’m sitting in my room, listening to it sleet outside.
     The room is very cold.
     I have accomplished nothing today.
     It feels like practice.
     There’s a pellet gun in my hand and I’ve been taking random shots at the wall.
     The pellets just bounce weakly because the CO2 cartridge is almost empty.
     And now so are the pellets.
     This is my career.
     I am amazing.
     My roommate walks down the hall.
     He knocks on my door.
     I don’t say anything.
     He opens the door and stands with his hand on the frame.
     Nodding a few times, he turns and points to the back of his neck.
     “Hey can you check again if there’s any ink on my neck here, it feels like there is. I can’t sleep thinking about it. It’s bothering me. There must be a pen somewhere loose in my bed and I slept on it. Last time man, promise.”
     I check his neck.
     There is no ink.
     He leaves.
     I shoot the remainder of the compressed air at my face and it feels nice.


3.

     Today I tell my roommate how I’ve been regularly taking a multivitamin.
     He tells me to prove it by punching through a car window as we walk the streets back from the grocery store.
     I am holding more groceries than him.


4.

     Wore the same pants to work today.
     The same ones that I’d dropped a raspberry on yesterday after work.
     And, it shows.
     The stain shows.
     It shows and I go through the day expecting to be fired for wearing the stained pants.
     Someone is going to walk up to me and loudly say, “Stained-paints, you bad!”
     Because only a bad person would wear stained pants.
     To me that is a true statement.
     I go through the day accepting the firing every time I imagine it happening—though no one ever says anything about the stain.
     No one ever asks me about it. I just laser items and put them on carts, not saying much.
     And (this is completely unrelated but) I’ve made a habit of going in the freezer stockroom and then making a noise with my throat that perfectly reproduces the tone of the freezer engine.
     Inside the freezer it is ten degrees below zero and I stand there and do the exact same pitch of humming as the engine.
     When I’m in the freezer making the same sound as the freezer, it is a good thing that I like.
     It works to be harmlessly in command by just not needing solutions.
     It works.
     By just coming into command of something that’s already happening a certain way.
     When I’m in the freezer making the same sound as the freezer, it is a good thing that I like.

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